


what’s left of my heart’s still made of gold

by defcontwo



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Gen, M/M, Post 3.26, canon typical homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-29
Updated: 2017-12-29
Packaged: 2019-02-23 09:06:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13186872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/defcontwo/pseuds/defcontwo
Summary: A punch, a drink, and a drag show. Kent Parson, in the aftermath.





	what’s left of my heart’s still made of gold

**Author's Note:**

> Here I am, back on my bullshit.

“The closet is — it’s a funny place to live for a while, because you really are alone in there.” — Jon Lovett, Podcast Despot

 

“My loneliness ain’t killing me no more.” — Britney Spears, Kent Parson’s Actual Favorite Person

 

~

 

It happens suddenly, or all at once. Maybe he’ll be able to pick this moment out later, sort through the hazy details to create a clear image after the fact.

But not now, in this glossy Vegas bar, surrounded by his teammates, with a phone in his hand, the image of Jack kissing another guy at center ice burned into his retinas. Not now, when all he can feel is a faint dizzy shaking all over, and all he can see when he closes his eyes, and blinks once, twice, is the bright light of Scraps’ iPhone.

One second, he’s watching Jack kiss some blond kid on center ice. The next second, Kent’s right fist makes contact with Carly’s jaw.

The group has fallen silent. Hell, the whole fucking bar has gone quiet, and his teammates are just....staring at him. Carly stumbled backwards, into a barstool, and he’s looking at Kent in shock, one hand raised to his right jaw, where a bright bruise is starting to bloom. Kent takes a deep breath, and shakes out his fist. Shit, that fucking hurts.

“Shut the fuck up, Carly,” Kent says, and then he turns around without another word, and walks out of the bar.

 

~

 

“Parser.....you okay?”

Kent sighs, but doesn’t turn around. The parking lot behind the bar is almost entirely empty, and lit by a couple of yellow street lights. Kent wishes it wasn’t. If there were other people there, he could probably get out of having this conversation.

Of course Scraps followed him. He’s not sure why he’s surprised. Scraps has been following his dumb ass around for six years now. Scraps spent the better part of Kent’s messy rookie year making sure that Kent didn’t go and drown in his own fucking vomit, or something.

That was before, though. Back when Kent wanted to be drunk basically every second that he didn’t have to be playing hockey, back when Jack was in rehab, and Kent needed a vodka shot or two to keep from waking in the night from nightmares of Jack’s face, pale and blue, lying motionless in a hospital bed.

It was a bad year, sure. But he got his shit together after that. Stopped drinking so much, started hanging out with his teammates more after practice. Got the A and then the C, and he made a promise to himself that if nothing else, he would go out there and be the best he could fucking be for his team, day in and day out.

He hasn’t needed Scraps to look after him in years.

Kent thinks of the punch he just threw, and the stinging in his right knuckles. Thinks of last year, the party at Jack’s frat house, the tears he can’t believe he let himself cry, and all of the bad shit that happened in the moments afterwards, an ugly bitter vile welling up out of him that he didn’t know how to stop.

Well, fuck. At least he’s put on a good show of looking like he’s got his shit together. Kind of embarrassing that it’s taken him this long to get the difference between looking the part, and living it. Even more embarrassing that he suckered himself into believing it, alongside everyone else.

“Uh......dude, can you hear me?” Scraps calls out, a little louder this time.

Kent stops just short of his car, and turns around. “Yeah, Scraps, I heard you.”

Scraps’ thick eyebrows are drawn close together, and he’s frowning, softly, the way he does when he doesn’t know what to say and wants to say something that helps. He’s a good dad, Kent thinks, not for the first time. His kids are lucky.

Kent shakes his hand again, and swears. It really does sting. “Fuck, man. Am I...do you think I broke something?”

Scraps huffs a laugh. “Oh man. Have you really never thrown a punch off the ice before?”

Kent makes a pained face. “Obviously not.”

“You were a little better at it just now,” Scraps cracks. “Seriously, you’ve gotten into like two fights before and they were both embarrassing. I’m impressed.”

Kent flips him off with his good hand. “I’m serious. If I just ended my career on Carl’s ugly fucking face, I swear to god, I’m going to murder him in his sleep.”

“Drama queen,” Scraps says, and then winces like maybe he’s said something wrong.

And maybe he did, and maybe Kent has let a lot of comments like that slide over the years, but — but it’s not like Scraps is wrong and Kent’s hand is really hurting too much for him to give a shit right this second. So he just stares at Scraps impatiently until Scraps rolls his eyes, and takes a step forward.

“Okay, man. Show me your hand....hold it out in the air in front of me, and okay, good like that. Make a fist and then open it up again,” Scraps says, and Kent does as he’s told, waiting for something to go horribly wrong as he slowly eases his fist open and closed, but nothing does.

“Does it hurt when you close your fist like that? Any stiffness?” Scraps asks.

Kent lets out a breath. “Nah, I’m good.”

Scraps rolls back his shoulders, and smiles. “You’ll be fine, kiddo. Just ice it when you get home. And maybe leave the fighting to someone else next time.”

Kent snorts. “Please. As if anyone else in that bar would’ve thrown that punch.”

Scraps’ lips thin, but he doesn’t argue. Kent takes a second to look at him, really look at Scraps — this Aces vet who took him under his wing so many years ago. He’s one of Kent’s best friends, sure, and they’ve lived in each other’s pockets in the way that you can’t avoid in a team on the road. Kent was there when he got the call from his wife that their daughter had taken her first steps. He knows his embarrassing childhood stories and the weird shit that he likes to eat on a long roadie. He knows a lot about Scraps but he never really gave it a lot of thought, how much that goes both ways. Kent looks at Scraps, and it occurs to him for the first time that Scraps has known for a long time, has known for years, without Kent ever having to say anything at all.

He doesn’t know when he gave himself away. Maybe he mumbled something about Jack when he was 18 and lost, maybe he stared a little long at a cute guy in a bar once, or maybe he talked about how much he liked Britney Spears a little too often. God knows he’s worried over that shit more than enough.

But maybe it was all of the above, a build up over time to something that turned out to be a whole lot more fucking obvious than Kent wanted to admit.

Dimly, Kent thinks he should be feeling relief in this moment.

Instead, all he wants to do is run far and fast in whatever direction will take him.

Kent unlocks his car without another word, gets in, and speeds off.

 

~

 

There’s a frozen bag of peas in his freezer, so Kent pulls it out and drops it on top of his right hand as he pours himself a shot of Belvedere with his left hand. He collapses into one of the high seats at the counter, and stares, for a second, at the broad expanse of the Vegas lights through his kitchen windows.

He’s spent entire nights looking out at that view, sitting in this exact same spot. He’ll do the same tonight, probably.

But there’s something that he has to do first.

Kent’s laptop is already open on the island in his kitchen, and it’s easy enough to find the video. It’s the first thing that pops up when you search “Jack Zimmermann” and it has millions of views at this point, just two hours later.

Kent pauses his hand right before he hits play, and stares at the preview image of Jack and his boyfriend, fuzzy and just about to kiss.

His whole life, he’s been all about finding the right time. The right time to snake his stick around an opposing player’s foot and take a shot. The right time to mouth off, to rile an opponent up enough that a fight gets started at just the exact best moment. The right time to pass, instead, and let someone else win the game for him.

He always meant to come out to his team, it’s just that it never felt like the right time, is all. That’s what he used to tell himself, anyways, back during his first few years with the Aces. But it’s been a good few years since he even entertained the idea of it.

And Jack — he kept waiting for their right time to come. Kept looking for their right time in all of the wrong moments. It wasn’t the draft. Wasn’t the year after Kent won the Cup. Wasn’t last year, when he showed up at Samwell on a stupid romantic fucking whim.

Kent stares at the still frame, and he doesn’t know the man in it at all. Jack never would’ve done something like this. The Jack he knew wouldn’t have done something like this. He gets it, kind of — Zimms is an all or nothing kind of guy and shades of grey have never suited him, but he was always so careful, before. This, this isn’t careful at all.

But if this is what Jack had to become to be okay, if this is what he had to do to be at home in his own skin, then — then Kent never could’ve become this with him. It took Kent ten minutes of halting, stumbling rambling to come out to his baby brother Max, and it’s the only time he’s managed to get the words out to someone who’s not his cat.

He looks at Jack, doing this for the whole world in one fell swoop, and he’s not sure if it’s brave or stupid, but it definitely makes Kent feel like he’s about to break out into hives or hyperventilate into a paper fucking bag.

It’s not, whatever. Kent’s known he’s gay since he was 15. But he fell in love with hockey when he was 5 years old. The boy next door’s long eyelashes and warm hands had nothing on the sound of the horn blaring when an impossible shot made its way into the net.

He’s never wanted to be The Gay Hockey Player. And he…..he still doesn’t want that — Kent closes his eyes, for a second, and thinks about what it would be like if he ran right out and made his own great big gay announcement to the NHL media tomorrow. Tries to put himself in Jack’s skates, just for a moment, and fails.

God. He doesn’t want that. He just wants to live his fucking life. That’s all he’s ever wanted. To live his life and play good hockey, and Kent always counted on figuring out the rest later.

Well, Kent guesses maybe it’s later now.

Kent looks at the still frame of Jack and gets it, finally: they were never going to have a right time. It didn’t exist.

He closes his laptop, and downs his shot in one smooth motion. Closes his eyes, for a beat, and takes a deep breath.

It’s weirdly freeing, this moment.

There’s a gay bar next to the team’s favorite cheat day Italian restaurant. Kent has stared at its front doors enough to know the name and address by heart.

Kent thumbs open his phone. He has about five texts and a few missed calls from Max. A couple of texts from Jeff that he’ll deal with later because he’s a little pissy at him for...for whatever, for not doing more back there. Maybe that’s not fair, but Kent’s not at his most charitable right this second.

He ignores all of it, and hails himself a Lyft.

 

~

 

Kent doesn’t have time to stand around and stare at the door — another car full of people pulled up behind his, and a huge group gets out, standing in a loosely held interpretation of a line behind him, and Kent’s not going to be the weirdo who stands in their way, second guessing whether or not he even wants to get through the front door.

He finds himself holding the door open for a beautiful woman with platinum blonde hair and sparkles on every inch of her body, clothes and makeup and all, and Kent blinks, and laughs at himself a little. He’s not so out of it that he doesn’t know what a drag queen is.

She thanks him, and tosses him a wink on her way in and Kent — Kent needs to remind himself, for once, that he is more than one thing.

So he follows.

He’s not sure what he was expecting. He hasn’t been inside a gay bar since he was 17 in Montreal, and that was more of a nightclub than anything else. He was fully prepared to walk in here and want to run for the hills, and knew that at the very least, he could always go next door for the mozzarella sticks.

But it’s just a bar, with plush dark red velvet booths and a circular dark-wood bar, serving up drinks in copper mugs. There’s a stage, for the drag performances, all set to the same earthy color scheme. There are guys in plaid flannel and guys in drag, and even a few guys in suits, who look like they’ve just come from work. No one is looking at him funny, and all of the TVs along the wall are playing what looks like The Devil Wears Prada. He walks the length of the place once, and doesn’t hear the name Jack Zimmermann at all.

Kent lets out a small sigh of relief.

All he has to do is walk up, and order a drink. That’s easy enough.

So, he nurses a plain club soda for an hour or so. Chats with the bartender for a little bit, an older guy who mostly just seems relieved to have found his most sober customer of the night, and watches a couple of drag performers take on the complete discography of Christina Aguilera (the theme of the night, apparently) — including the one at the door, the queen who winked at him, and he claps a little harder for her, even though he’s always been more of a Britney kind of guy, because she has a nice smile and a good sense of humor about herself, and because he finally got himself through the front door.

He could go home with someone tonight. If he wanted to, he could. He’s not avoiding the opportunity — a couple of guys come up to him, and he makes some idle small talk, and tries some flirting on for size.

He’s not going to pretend like it’s not a reality, like it hasn’t been years and years since he’s kissed anyone who wasn’t Jack. It has. And god, he wants to change that some day soon.

For a good twenty minutes, a guy named Val with a big laugh and hundreds of pictures of his dog on his phone has Kent tempted, just a little.

But that’s not why he came here tonight.

He came here tonight to let himself know that he could.

And for now, that’s enough.

 

~

 

There’s an emergency team meeting at 10 AM the next day.

For a second, as Kent blinks blearily at his phone, he thinks that Carly can’t be that much of a tattletale that he got a whole fucking meeting called over his bruised jaw.

But then the rest of the night clicks back into place, the Falconers and Jack and the blond kid and the drag shows, and Kent sighs, annoyed. This is just classic NHL. Probably every franchise in the league is having an emergency meeting about what is and isn’t acceptable as a public stunt this morning.

So Kent rolls out of bed at 9:12 AM, throwing on a pair of blue jeans and an old, soft white button-down, and makes it to the T-Mobile Arena in record time.

When he pulls into his parking spot, there’s someone there waiting for him. For a second, he thinks it might be Jeff, who keeps trying to fucking call, but no — the figure is a little too short and a little slight to be Jeff.

No, it’s Fips, the rookie. Not a rookie anymore but forever a rookie to Kent, and still painfully young-looking, standing next to Kent’s parking space with his arms crossed over his chest. It wouldn’t be the first time — Fips has waited for him like this for a million reasons, from going over drills for the power play to asking for advice on how to find an apartment that doesn’t totally suck.

But it’s a little weird, here and now, with their season over and nothing but this stupid fucking emergency meeting ahead of them.

“Hey Parser,” Fips says, as Kent steps out of his car. “Uh, can we talk for a few minutes?”

Kent raises an eyebrow. “This about Carly?”

“What?” Fips says, looking a little startled. Good. Kent didn’t really think that Carly was that much of a douche but you never know. “No, it’s….you know what this meeting is about, right?”

Kent can’t help it. He laughs. “Dude, I think even the fucking arena cats know what this meeting is about.”

“Yeah,” Fips says, and he smiles, but it trembles, just a little. “So, uh. Since you’re the captain and all, and I guess like, you do know Zimmermann, so I was, uh, wondering….what. What do you think? About. Uh. This.”

Kent leans back against his car, and considers. Takes in the shape of Fips: nineteen years old and a little gangly, still, in track pants and an Aces sweatshirt, one hand fiddling nervously with the drawstring on his sweatshirt. He’s doing his level best to look everywhere but at Kent, and with all of that taken together, something clicks into place.

What would Kent have done, if he was still just a teenager and someone had just come out as publicly like Jack had? What would he have done, if he had had a captain at nineteen that he could’ve talked to, like this?

Probably exactly what Fips is doing right now.

Kent blows out a breath, and chooses his words carefully. “Zimms — Jack is, he’s always deserved a place in the NHL, no matter what shit the dickheads on SportsCenter like to say.” Fips nods, but he’s still frowning, so Kent shakes his head, and makes himself push on. “We….it’s been a long time since he and I have been friends, but it’s not because of that, Fips.”

At least not exactly, not in the way that Fips is probably fearing.

“Cool,” Fips says, his right hand dropping from where it was all twisted up in his drawstring. “Cool. Uh. Is it cool?”

Kent almost wants to laugh, but he knows Fips wouldn’t take it well and anyways, there’s nothing about this situation that’s funny. “It’s cool with me, Fips. If it’s not cool with everyone, then I guess I’ll have to punch them like I punched Carly last night.”

“You punched Carly?” Fips sputters, and then recovers, as every inch of him relaxes from whatever tense flight or fight stance he was in just a second ago. “I didn’t even know you could throw a punch, Parser.”

Kent huffs. “Shut up, man. I did alright.”

Fips just beams in response, so whatever it is that just happened, Kent must’ve done something right. “Should we go let Jameson give us a dumb lecture now?”

“Lead the way, bro,” Kent says, as they start off towards the elevator that will lead them deep into the belly of the arena, to the locker room.

Kent used to tell himself that he needed to find the right time, to come out to his teammates. And now — now, he thinks maybe he doesn’t fucking owe it to them. They don’t get to have more of him than he’s willing to give.

But, well. Maybe he could stand to throw a few more punches, stand to call them out on their shit a little more. They’re not….they’re not bad people, not even Carly. Carly’s just a dumbass, is all.

And Kent can work with that. He can work with hockey stupid; shit, it’s all he’s ever known.

Finally, Fips stops short because they’re here already, and they’re late, judging by the murmuring coming from inside the locker room. Fips looks back at Kent, almost like he’s checking, like he wants to make sure that he doesn’t get stuck in there alone. “Parser, you ready?”

Kent shakes himself, and gives Fips a thin slip of a smile. “Sure. Why not.”

 

~

 

Jameson bought the Aces after the franchise’s first owner went bankrupt, and in the ten years since, he hasn’t learned a single fucking thing about hockey outside of how much money it makes him.

Kent goes to sit in his usual spot, on the bench in front of his locker, and finds that Jeff and Scraps are already there, ready to bracket him. Kent shakes his head, and gives Jeff a small smile as he sits down.

The locker room is packed, though. Not a single face is missing, not even Carly, who is sitting off to the side, hand cupping his chin to hide the bruise on his face. Kent catches his gaze, amused, and raises a single eyebrow at Carly’s annoyed (but not too annoyed) expression, before looking away.

They’ve all been tuning Jameson out. But the more Kent looks around the room, the more he starts to notice that a lot of his teammates are looking back. Looking to him, to see what he’s going to do next.

Huh.

Kent leans back, and folds his arms across his chest. All of the dust that got kicked up inside of him last night, last year, for the past seven fucking years of his life — it starts to settle a little more, even now that he’s back here, with his team, a whole world away from the drag bar he was in last night.

This, he can do.

**Author's Note:**

> \- Fips is a totally fictional creation of mine that I’ve possibly also written into some of my other CP fics but is not actually a canon Ace at all.  
> \- yes, Farrah Moan totally tried to flirt with Kent on her way into the bar. I mean, can you blame her?


End file.
